No link between violent media and behaviour: study

A NEW long-term study into violent media in the US could help settle the long-standing argument of whether or not violent films and video games are to blame for violence in society.

The research, led by psychologist Christopher Ferguson and published in the Journal of Communication, not only found that there was no link between violent media and behaviour but also questioned the methodology of previous studies suggesting the two were related.

Ferguson and his team pointed out that many laboratory-based studies into the effect of media violence have measured aggression in test subjects through "less aggressive outcomes ranging from filling in the missing letters of words through delivering non-painful noise bursts to a consenting opponent."

The study points out that these studies also commonly "provide exposure to brief clips of media, rather than full narrative experiences" and that "the resultant aggressive behaviours are also outside a real-world context in which the aggression appears to be sanctioned by the researchers themselves."